Well, it's starting to kick me out of the game every once in a while now. Just completely closes. Always after a while of playing, so maybe a memory issue of some kind. I'm saving often to hopefully not lose any important progress.

The guy at work told me about the dark elf at Black-Briar Meadery who you can continually persuade to raise your speech skill to 100, and I was too weak to not take advantage. It was a good way to jump some levels. I don't think I've chosen the best perks, though. I should have planned better.

I'm trying to get my blacksmithing and enchanting up. So far my enchanting is still pathetic, more concentration on blacksmith. I want to work up to being able to create and improve the really high-level heavy armor. Slowly but surely. I'm just wondering if it will be a total waste of time if I find unique weapons and armor that are beyond what I can do on my own.

At the risk of jinxing myself I’ve had no problems so major problems. Just rendering and other odds and ends like my character floating for a while instead of walking. Lydia got smashed by a swinging log and I think know “into” a wall. I turned around when I heard it and all I saw was a big blood splatter against the wall but no Lydia anywhere to be seen. So I just reloaded a recent save.

I’ve saved about a third of my perks waiting to see where to best use them. I spend most of my time sneaking around so many have already gone there. I’m trying now to build up my destruction since to many things in the wild were beating the crap out of me and magic seems to deal out more DPS and once their weak it’s easier to finish them off hand-to-hand.

It sure helps to have Lydia around to keep the bad guys busy. I’ll stay hidden and swing around to the side where I can catch the whole lot of them with a double flame without hitting her. I need to find a healing spell since every time an animal looks at me I get sick. I’ve killed two dragons now with just me and Lydia so I think I’m getting that down pretty good. At least until some boss dragon shows up. I got the final blessing from the Greybeards so I have one full strength shout now. I just keep forgetting to use it.

She becomes your Housecarl, after completing the “Dragon Rising” quest given by the Jarl of Whiterun. You also have to have done I think it’s called the “Bleak Falls Barrow” and the “Golden Claw” quests gotten from the shopkeepers in Riverwood. Those two quests actually flow directly from one to the other. Although it hasn’t happened she can die if she’s damaged to much while trying to heal herself so watch out for friendly fire or drawing an area attack against you that she is also in.

She wanted to follow me even before I bought the house in Whiterun so I don’t think buying the house is a prerequisite.

Another note on Lydia, and possibly other followers, is that she will equip at least a new weapon if you have her carry it. I found that out when I unloaded a bunch of heavy stuff on her and next thing I know instead of using a sword and shield she’s wielding a magical two-handed war hammer. I don’t know if she will equip the best weapon in whatever category you limit her to but I assume so since she also started wearing some of the jewelry I had her carry. I also haven’t yet tried to see if I can select what she uses from the items she’s carrying or not. Now I only let her have the magical weapons when I’m expecting a boss fight so she’s not wasting charges on skeletons.

Also make sure not to outrun her. As you level up she has trouble keeping up. She also has the occasional navigation issue. There are a lot of things you can climb or jump off that she can’t.

I haven't used Lydia yet, but I did go through the Companions questline and there's a part where you have no choice but to let someone come along with you. Then there are two of them with you, and I think one of them may have died. I'll have to go back to the headquarters and see if he made it back or not.

I did a lot of grinding and got my blacksmith level up to 100 by making a ton of hide bracers and iron daggers. I need to find a way to make money, though. I keep doing just enough questing to have the money to do this grinding for my skills, but I have no extra cash for buying any of the enchanted stuff I may want to disenchant to gain knowledge. Hopefully there's a fast way to raise my enchanting ability, too. I'm only at 30 now, and if I'm going to make the truly badass weapons and armor, I'm going to need that to reach 100 as well.

My character is at level 35 right now with only one unclaimed perk point. I'm saving my next several perks for enchant, assuming I can get my skill level up to take advantage of it.

But yeah, I'll probably do all of this and then end up finding superior weapons and armor, anyway.

The best way to make money short of finding a glitch is to make potions and sell them. It also raises your alchemy skill and help level you up. I stopped doing things like that though because I was leveling faster than my combat skills could keep me alive, so I’ve been spending more time exploring and just finding things to make it easier to fast travel later on.

Good idea on finding locations. I've done a little of that, but not enough. And you're right about the combat skills not maturing at the same rate being a problem.

I'm not going to like being unable to afford all of the perks. Those types of little bonuses to your skills would happen naturally in Oblivion simply be reaching certain numbers. Now I have to buy them, and with the level cap being 50 with 280 perks to choose from, I can't make the God-like character I could in the last two games. I just hope the level cap is increased a bit in the DLC and I can find enough unique items that approximate the effects of some of the perks. Or I could get a life. Or I could just buy more Axioms!